What if… Marvel could feel fresh again?
Season Two of the animated series takes a step in the right direction.
The Short Take:
Unburdened by having to upsell the series’ premise or define itself in relation to MCU canon, this season just felt fun.
Image Credit: Collider
[SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to discuss in detail the events of most if not all 9 episodes of Season 2 of What if...?, as well as some of Season 1.]
The Long Take:
When I go back and look at the episode list for What if…? Season 1, the season seems very focused on a “sliding doors moment” approach to alternate realities. It’s working so hard to orient fans around recognizable MCU moments. Remember Captain America: The First Avenger? What if Peggy Carter took the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers? Remember Guardians of the Galaxy? What if the Ravagers kidnapped T’Challa instead of Peter Quill? And so on. In some cases, hewing so closely to stories we’d seen before rendered the wild, endless possibilities of a “what if” series strangely insert. (In other cases, we got zombies, so the storytelling wasn’t completely risk averse.)
It’s likely that Marvel anchored Season 1 of What if...? in familiar stories because they felt the need to a.) teach most viewers how to consume a multiversal psuedo-anthology series with less confusing, incremental change and b.) upsell those viewers on non-canonical stories. As if to say, “sure, you don’t have to watch this for the broader MCU plot engine, but this series still has all the character and plot from films you already love.”
Season 2 no longer has to do this, and it shows. As a quick caveat, as I wish to manage expectations, I’ll say that there isn’t anything mind-bendingly unhinged here, except for maybe the finale. It doesn’t push the envelope in the way the Spider-Verse films do in style and storytelling. But, on the whole, the stories in What if...? Season 2 are a lot more inventive, original, and fun than Season 1, which I also enjoyed, to be clear. If you go back and read all of my Season 1 reviews — yes, I did one for each episode — you’ll see that I’m pretty positive and, in some cases, making some of the same comments I make here. But everything’s relative.
Image Credit: Marvel.com
While we do visit familiar places like Xandar, Avengers Tower, and Sakaar, we are no longer treading over that which we have already seen in those places, pivoting at one crucial moment in time, sliding doors style. Episodes begin under a new premise all together. What if an older generation of Avengers who have only been elder side characters team up to fight Ego, Peter’s father from Guardians or the Galaxy Vol. 2? What if Nebula investigates Yondu’s murder in a deliciously moody cyberpunk noir mystery? What if Tony Stark tangoes with The Grandmaster, but instead of merely re-staging Thor: Ragnarok, the episode constructs a story in which Thor, Loki, and the Hulk aren’t even there. (And there are chinchillas!)
Image Credit: MCU Wiki
The distinction I’m making may seem subtle, but it’s an important shift and, I think, contributes to the overall success of this season and its ability to surpass Season 1. The stories feel brand new rather than revarnished. They don’t feel forced to define themselves in terms of MCU canon. A newfound sense of play permeates the season. I never would have thought to pair Wenwu and Hela together, but it works. Nowhere else would we get to see the Norse Goddess of Death in a martial arts training montage.
Image Credit: Collider
Much less subtle (and much easier to support my claim here) is an entirely new superhero introduced this Season: Kahhori. A version of her does not even exist in the comics, so everything we see in episode six is completely original. I had almost forgotten what it was like to get to know a truly new superhero, with no prior referential baggage or expectations. She was a breath of fresh air. Adventurous, rebellious, and incredibly stubborn, she fits right in with the pantheon of Marvel superheroes. Her repeated attempts to climb to the portal in the sky, despite being told others before her had failed, was fun to watch and told me so much about her personality.
And there’s a very clear character through-line from the start to the end of the episode. We begin with Kahhori questioning the legend of the Forbidden Lake, forging ahead to explore it anyway. And later, when all the other inhabitants of The Sky World seem to have complacently accepted that this is their new life and that they cannot leave, Kahhori is the one who asks that they expand their thinking. In a scathing monologue, she says “…you’ve been away from the bones of your ancestors for too long…The spirit in this land made you strong. Gave you gifts. But you’ve gotten too comfortable. You’ve forgotten your origins. But I can’t. Not when our people are hurting.” If the portal is too high in the sky, everyone assumes they can’t leave and moves on with their lives. Kahhori, on the other hand, moves the portal. She challenges the status quo wherever she goes, and that ultimately helps her become a hero.
Not to mention her powers are super cool. I loved the look of the glowing Tesseract blue coursing through her eyes and body, even if it is kind of taking a very faded page from the Avatar/Na’vi playbook. With a combination of abilities like the Mario-platform hopping of Ms. Marvel and telekinesis of Doctor Strange, she seems extremely powerful, almost to the level of a Scarlet Witch or a Captain Marvel. Watching Kahhori use these new powers to become anti-imperialist freedom fighter was extremely satisfying to watch. Perhaps it is too obvious to be said, but Kahhori being as cool as she is stands as a boon for diversity of representation in the MCU. Kahhori’s is a perspective long absent from the superhero genre, and I hope we get to see more of her.
Image Credit: IGN
And yet, after charting all this new territory, the series still managed to create a (small) sense of cohesion. There were several passing references — primarily at the start of an episode — to some of the “Guardians of the Multiverse” introduced in the prior season. Captain Carter/Captain Britain appears in several episodes, we get an origin story of sorts of the Gamora from Season 1, and the demonic Cthulu Doctor Strange goes on another moral rollercoaster. It was thrilling to see Kahhori return to team up with Captain Carter in a chaotic, everything but the kitchen sink battle. I can see how the might have been a little too much for some. But, what’s the point of a multiverse if you can’t get nuts every once in a while?
Image Credit: Comicbook.com
Grounding the frenetic action (which did remind me of parts of Across the Spider-Verse) were the emotional beats carried over from Season 1. Since we had had an entire episode devoted to a grieving Strange Supreme advancing and morphing to the point of destroying his own universe, I instantly understood why he had built this forge and collect all these heroes to power it. And pairing him with Captain Carter, who has found and lost Steve Rogers in multiple episodes, was brilliant. They are two sides of the lost love coin. Strange assuming Carter would understand and Carter very clearly drawing a moral line in response cinched the season together in a way I had not expected.
This take is getting long now, and I haven’t even mentioned Happy Hogan turning into a purple hulk (named the Freak in the comics, apparently) in the middle of a hilarious yet cozy Die Hard homage (I guess we know Marvel’s stance on whether or not that’s a Christmas movie). Or the Robin Hood/Shakespeare mash-up which I later learned is an adaptation of an 8-issue limited series written by Neil Gaiman in 2003; in the moment I thought it was ripped straight out of Star Trek: TNG. (Who makes a better Prince of Thieves, Picard or Steve Rogers?) At the risk of sounding repetitive: this was so fun.
Image Credit: The Direct
What does this freedom and lightness, this sense of shedding the burden of canon potentially mean for the MCU going forward? In its fraught state right now, this kind of sandbox play seems like just the thing. Though, it’s hard to say how isolated this lightening of the load is. I doubt that it would spill over into the MCU proper, but hopefully creators take a lesson from What if…? and — despite unfounded rumors about Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Evans coming back — take bold steps forward rather than insecure steps chained to the past. Even with the official firing of Jonathan Majors as Kang, seemingly hours after the acclaimed actor’s guilty verdict came in, I hope that Marvel doesn’t feel the need to dig their heels in and double down on a planned storyline that was handcrafted for Majors. I, and I’m sure other fans, are open to something incontiguous if it’s original and fun.